


In the Quiet, In the Dark

by amaranthinecanicular



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: More characters to come, Multi, Zombies, there are not enough zombie aus in this fandom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 12:52:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4747136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaranthinecanicular/pseuds/amaranthinecanicular
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is who is alive: Church. Tucker. Captain Butch Flowers.</p><p>This is who is not: a fuckton of zombies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Quiet, In the Dark

This is who is alive: Church. Tucker. Captain Butch Flowers.

This is who is not: a fuckton of zombies.

—

You meet Captain Flowers in a big house, with shattered picture frames on the cream-colored walls and old blood streaked along the hardwood. Some of the blood is yours. Most of it isn’t.

You come back to life (bad choice of words, you realize, though you don’t remember why) in the evening. The sun is going down. It spills smoldering embers through the slats of wood nailed over the windows. When you open your eyes that’s the first thing you see, those windows, boarded up, and the sun trying to pry through them. You make your assessment from that first handful of seconds, from that first inhale, and the stale air on your tongue, and the misty taste of copper, and the slick, uncomfortable wetness on your forehead. These are the things you will remember, when you look back over your shoulder at the day you met Captain Flowers: that sunlight and that dust and that pain.

(These are the things you will pretend to forget: how, for a second, you couldn’t remember your own name. Couldn’t remember being Church, Leonard Church. Forget that you forgot, Church. Forget it.)

Your head hurts. You wish you could fall back to sleep.

Inhale.

On the exhale, you’ve got a knife that isn’t yours pressed against the throat of a man you don’t know, pinned to the floors of a house you don’t live in. A ghost house, your mind supplies, and your hand gets itchy around the blade.

“Who the fuck are you,” you demand, and find yourself surprised to hear your own voice: you don’t remember sounding so bitter or severe. “Where the fuck am I, and what the fuck do you want with me?” A brief pause. “You know what, better question: what the fuck is going on?”

It encompasses all three of your questions in one, which is why you like it. More efficient.

“Easy there, sport,” says the man with the knife to his neck, in the distinct and pleasant tones of a man without a fucking knife to his neck. He’s got dark eyes and dark hair, long and spilling out over the floorboards. There’s blood on the collar of his jacket, stark against the aqua fabric and clearly someone else’s, which doesn’t really bode well. You watch the man’s hands, fingers splayed and palms aimed ceiling-ward, a gesture of goodwill. He’s smiling, looking completely unperturbed by the blade at his jugular, which… also doesn’t bode well. “No one’s here to hurt you. Just want to help.”

He’s still smiling, and nope, that doesn’t make you feel any better. No one should be able to grin like that with a knife at their throat. Shit is just creepy. “Oh yeah? Help with what, asshole, taking advantage of me while I’m sleeping?”

The man chuckles lightly, entirely unoffended, and then suddenly he’s moving and suddenly-

Suddenly you’re the one on your back with the knife pressed to your throat, and as your head connects with the floor your world lights up with pain, bright along your vision and buzzing through your teeth and sharp through your veins.

 _“Jesus,_ you fucking _dick,”_ you hiss, as pain continues to radiate from the back of your skull outward, and the man laughs genially.

“No, from what I’ve heard, he was a pretty upstanding guy,”

Wow, you don’t think you’ve ever wanted to stab someone so much. Too bad creepy mystery man now has the - huh. Ka-bar, actually. Nice knife. Military grade. It’s the first time you’re noticing it, and seeing it in this guy’s palm instead of your own is not very reassuring.

You flinch when Smiley reaches for you, but the guy just makes these soft sort of cooing sounds, all soothing and shit, as though that would actually calm you down. He reaches with his knife hand to the back of your head, the place where the pain is still pulsing, and when he pulls it back his fingers come away dripping and red. “I wanted to help with that.”

Your own hands are pinned to your sides by Smiley’s knees, but one is freed when you try to touch your head, and you’re still somehow punched with dull surprise when yes, _ow,_ prodding around there does indeed fucking hurt. Your gaze darts back to the man. “You did this?”

The man twirls the knife between his fingers. “Nope. Was going to try and help, though.”

He gestures with the blade and you allow a quick glance in that direction - a roll of gauze, a dirtied cloth. You look back to the man, who flips the blade easily. Smiles. Offers you the handle. “If you’ll let me, that is. Don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Too late for that.”

But when you try to sit up, the man backs off without prompting, and when you snatch the knife before the offer can be retracted the man just smiles and nods, and when you sway in place - because okay, maybe sitting up so fast wasn’t the best idea when you might have a concussion, maybe - the solid hand on your shoulder is indeed grounding, even if the grin is unnerving as all hell.

You stand when you think you can, shrugging the hand off and backing away. Flex your fingers around the ka-bar; it’s a foreign sort of familiarity, as though the muscle memory is inherited from someone else. As you hold out the ka-bar and drop into a fighting stance you shouldn’t know, you tell yourself it’s more comforting than unnerving, and tell yourself that it isn’t a lie.

“So what’s to stop me from stabbing you, taking all your shit, and clearing out?”

The man stands as well, albeit at a much more leisurely pace. He shrugs. “Nothing, really. Try it, if that suits your fancy.”

That… wasn’t what you were expecting.

The man goes on, still alarmingly at ease. “You don’t strike me as the kind of fellow to attack an unarmed man, but if I’m wrong, then by all means. Would be my fault for judging you prematurely.”

Okay, no, that’s _really_ unsettling, like, there is no way any rational human being could be so relaxed when someone just threatened to gut them and steal their stuff. Or so smiley. Why the hell is he still smiling?

Your attention is drawn to his shoulders, loose and lax, to the weight he distributes evenly between two firmly planted boots. The easy tilt to his head; his open eyes, his open hands, hanging casual at his sides. There are weapons scattered on the floor, but the guy seems to be unarmed. And given his strangely unguarded posture, he either really thinks you won’t hurt him, or…

The realization settles slow and cold, a stone heavy in your stomach. “…You don’t think I can kill you.” Not a question.

“Not really, no.”

“But you can kill me.”

Smiley McGee shrugs humbly. “Well, I don’t want to appear immodest. I’d prefer to avoid violence, if at all possible. Not to mention it seems bad manners to kill someone when I don’t even know their name.” He pauses, presumably for you to offer this information. When you don’t, the man doesn’t seem to mind. “But, to answer your question, yes. I do believe that if it came to it, I would win this fight.”

You stare. Flexes his fingers again. “Even though I have the knife?”

“Even though you have the knife.“

The worst part is, you believe him.

Well then, Church. Here are your options:

Try to stab the guy anyway for being a fucking creep, and probably get killed for your trouble.

Give him the knife back and beg for your life.

Find out what the actual _fuck_ is making that noise.

“Okay, what the actual fuck is making that noise?” You whirl to point your knife at the door, keeping Smiley in your periphery. It’s a heavy sound, a thick, meaty sort of thudding, over and over. It makes you twitch, makes your palms sweat. You know that sound. You had nightmares about that sound, in the quiet and in the dark places of your head.

Smiley stands up with a stretch and you almost throw the knife at him, but the thudding is suddenly accompanied by a moaning and the weapon remains trained on the door. “Those, my friend, are our esteemed guests.”

You think you answer, “Yeah, well, it sounds like our esteemed guests are pretty pissed,” but you aren’t sure because you can’t hear anything past the thumping on the door and the thumping of your own pulse in your head. Something feral is waking inside you as the creeping light from the sun is obscured by creeping fingers, long and thin and groping through the wood. They look rotten.

“That they do. Though it would be better manners to stay and welcome them, I was going to take the back door.” Smiley’s cleaning up, tossing his gear casually into a bag. He picks up a rifle - a fancy, long, military grade sniper rifle, Jesus Christ - and slings it over his shoulder.

“You’re welcome to come along,” he says. “I think it’s much better to travel with friends, don’t you?”

You don’t answer. Your gaze darts back and forth between the door, shuddering in it’s frame, and Smiley, hovering at the edge of the room. “Of course,” he says, as you deliberate, “You could stay and chat with our new friends. But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

And then he walks away and you’re left to stare at the wood and the light and the fingers, and the very last thing you want to do, Church, is examine the deep dark hollowness inside of you that begins to gape and claw whenever another thump shudders the door. So you grip the handle tighter, mutter “fucking fuck” to get the aggressive silence out of your head, and you follow the stranger out the backdoor.

He’s waiting for you, leaning casually against the railing of the short steps that lead to street level - there’s a voice in the back of your head saying that houses are supposed to have backyards, but you ignore it - and it makes you scowl to realize he fully expected you to follow him all along and you just proved him right. When he sees you he smiles and approaches, and you speak before he can:

“We’re not friends.”

“Hm?”

“You and me.” Your voice is stiff. “We’re not friends.”

You don’t know enough about this man to expect anything in the way of reactions, but somehow, you feel like you should have expected his easy laughter.

“Not yet,” he says, and it cuts your scowl deeper. He begins to walk, with some sort of clear purpose in mind, which is good because you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing. You follow, a few paces behind. The world is quieter than it should be, that much is for fucking certain, and the quiet creeps into you, fills in your cracks and it feels like poison. You don’t like the silence, you decide. It makes you jumpy. It makes your palm sweat on the leather handle of the ka-bar.

You don’t speak again until you come to a different house, a half hour later, this time with a yard. There’s a sliver of golden light on the horizon, darkness closing in fast. You can hear howling, but it doesn’t sound like any kind of dog you know. It sounds hungry.

“Wait here,” says Smiley, and to that you say, “Fuck no.”

He just chuckles. “Alright, then, if you’d feel safer together.” He holds a finger to his lips and you tamp down the urge to stab him.

Smiley turns around the shift is fucking palpable. Where a second ago you were talking to a creep, now you’re following a shadow. You see him, right in front of you, but you don’t hear him - not breathing, not walking. He’s utterly silent and it makes your fingers twitch. He inspects the house, peering at things that seem to be inconsequential to you. You feel awkward and lumbering behind him, crunching leaves and snapping twigs where he was silent. He doesn’t seem to mind, and a few minutes later stands up and - there, he regains presence again. 

“Looks like this place is good for the night,” he says, casually going to the front door. “I’ve been scouting this place for a while now, just had to make sure it was still secure. After you,”

He opens the door but you’re staring out into the black, deep and dark and hungry. Another howl; the sound gets under your skin and stays there.

You go inside the house, quicker than you’d like to admit.

—

Zombies.

Because the world hates you, fucking obviously.

—

“Captain Butch Flowers, at your service.”

You’re on the road again. In the small hours of the morning, when the world was supposed to be quiet and dark and safe, the howling got too close and you and the mystery man packed up and left. You were ready right away – you hadn’t been sleeping. He gave you the rifle and told you it was yours, that he found you with it, and you don’t question the emptiness where the memory of this gun should be. You just take it and clutch it tight before he can take it back. There’s a strange, familiar sort of comfort at having it in your hands, so you take that to be a sign that he’s telling the truth. It’s almost like a memory, anyway.

You’re clutching the gun now, as your eyebrows shoot to your hairline. "You’re military?”

“Yes indeedy,” He’s braiding his hair back - his long, silky, non-regulation hair. Catches sight of your expression, cocks his head curiously. “That hard to believe?”

“Just that your hair begs to differ,” you snort, and if you were hoping to ruffle Flowers’s feathers then you are sorely disappointed. Wholly unselfconscious, Flowers laughs, hands dropping from his own hair to ruffle yours and _fuck,_ you should have seen that coming.

“I guess it does! But when you’re in as long as me, you get a few perks.”

Your lips curl down in doubt at the thought of hair like that being considered a ‘perk’ and he gives an overenthusiastic wink in response. In a way it’s hard to believe, and in another way it’s not - Flowers moves like water, fluid and smooth, without any of the rigidity you have come to associate with the military. The guy says things like peachy keen and tells shitty dad jokes, for god’s sake. On the other hand, his skill and the quiet of his footsteps and the ease with which ganking zombies seems to come to him all scream black ops. Not to mention the whole “as long as me” comment, which sets your teeth on edge because holy fuck how old is he even. He’s got those confusing features that make it impossible to tell what ethnicity he is or how many years he has under his belt, laugh lines but no crow’s feet, bright eyes and old hands and a set of scars you could chart a map on. You look at Flowers and you can’t read a thing, not one fucking thing.

Flowers is still ruffling your hair, careful to keep away from the newly bandaged wound, and he gives the shaggy locks a playful tug.

“Looking a little non-reg yourself there, Private,” he laughs, and you freeze up, inside and out. The cortex of your brain frosts over.

“You knew I was military?” you hear a voice say, and it’s speaking another language. Flowers’s smile softens.

“Takes one to know one, son.” He reaches over to clap your shoulder but you jerk away before contact. You can hear your heartbeat thundering around in your head, and you wonder if Flowers can too, if he will yell, like COs always yell, because you’re military and you remember and _why are you only remembering now-_

But Flowers’s smile doesn’t even waver. “Don’t worry,“ he says, "it’s not too obvious. I’ve just got a trained eye. Besides, who’s going to judge you at the end of the world?”

He nods understandingly, this time not reaching for you, which is good, because you’re military and you know that but you don’t know what you would do if someone touched you right now. What Flowers does instead is finish braiding his hair, a tight, dark line, and then roll to his feet with the unmistakable grace of a soldier. What he does is stretch his arms, pop his shoulders, roll his head on his neck. What he does is offer you his hand, without touching. Offers it. Just offers it, lets you decide for yourself. For a second, you really, really want to take it.

You stand on your own, and Flowers just slides his hand smoothly back into his pocket, unoffended. You wonder if you move with the same militaristic grace that he does; you doubt it. You wonder if that’s how Flowers knew - you doubts that too. You wonder about the last time someone called you Private Church. You wonder why you didn’t remember that you were military until Flowers said so.

You wonder a lot of things.

“Come on, soldier.” Flowers walks a few paces ahead of you, a strange almost-spring to his step. “The sun’s starting to set. We best be on our way.”

—

You stay with Flowers because he keeps you alive.

That’s the only reason.

—

These are the things you know, Private Leonard Church.

You know how to shoot a gun. You know how to disassemble and reassemble a standard issue assault rifle in under a minute. You know how to kill a man, with and without a weapon. You know how to shoot a sniper rifle, though you don’t know how to do it well. You know how to best take out geek. You know that geek zeek walker rotter dead-head are all colloquial terms for motherfucking zombie.

These are the things you know.

These are not the things you remember. You remember much less.

The first thing you remember, when you bother to remember, is Tex. You remember her hands; you remember her hair. You remember sparring with her and remember being kicked in the balls way too many fucking times. You remember how much of an unrelenting bitch she was. You remember loving her so much you thought it would kill you.

The second thing you remember is that waking up had always been a process. Normally it involved a lot of swearing and at least three flip-offs to whoever was trying to wake you. Your sister, usually. She would have to drag you from the bed by the ankles to take you on her morning runs. After she left, Tex took up the mantle, but with a lot more unnecessary nut punching.

Now you wake up quick and clean, no sound or complaint or fuss. You don’t dream. Suddenly you’re just… not asleep anymore. Tex isn’t here, and neither is your sister. They haven’t been here for a long while.

“Rise and shine, Private Church,” says Captain Flowers, and when you answer, “Fuck, five more minutes,” on principal, Flowers just laughs and lets you have ten because there’s no threat to rush for. You can’t explain why that makes you want to break his nose.

—

This is how you meet Tucker:

Throwing grenades into a zombie horde and screaming every swear you know, and several that you just came up with off the top of your head as Tucker jumps from a fucking rooftop.

But first:

You’re running low on supplies, and there’s one of those huge jumbo Walmarts across the freeway. You and Flowers are crouched in the treeline, watching it. The way you’ve worked so far was to stay away from shit like that - keep to the small stuff, houses and isolated gas stations, unnoticed, because big things like Walmart usually attract scavengers and scavengers usually attract the dead. So you keep to stealth, and it’s gotten you through well enough, if not really fucking hungry every other day. Rationing sucks.

But there’s something different, here. The difference is that after two hours of scouting and scoping from every possible angle, there’s still no sign of anyone, dead or alive. It’s quiet, and you’re getting tired of waiting. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

Flowers continues to peer through his binoculars. He’s got a lot of little military grade gizmos like that. “Patience is a virtue, Private Church.”

“Patience is for people who have had three square meals in the past three days. We’ve had one and a half. Maybe.” Flowers begins to hum under his breath and you snarl. “What, you think it’s a trap?”

“It did cross my mind.”

That surprises you into shutting up, for a second, and before you can collect yourself to ask who the hell would set a trap like this he says, “But, no, I don’t think that’s the case. I’ll go, you’ll cover me. Wait ninety seconds, and if the coast is still clear, then you follow.”

You open your mouth to protest but he claps your shoulder, grins, says, “Better safe than sorry, right Private?” and then he’s gone.

“Crazy fucker,” you mutter to yourself, because no one else is there to hear you, and because you discovered pretty quick that literally anything was better than the silence waiting in the back of your own skull. “Crazy black ops ninja motherfucker.”

Through the scope of your rifle you watch Flowers, and occasionally the surrounding buildings and the other rooftops. He’s strolling casually, arms swinging by his sides, navigating the abandoned cars on the freeway and crossing into the near-empty parking lot. To anyone that doesn’t know the psycho he’d probably look like an easy target. You wait, feeling paranoid, for something to happen. Nothing does. You wonder if Flowers is whistling; it’s a habit of his, this cheery fucking whistle of some cheery fucking tune as he separates dead heads from dead shoulders. You wait for what you approximate to be another thirty seconds, and then you say “fuck it” and jog out after him.

“Sixty seconds,” says Flowers when you come up on his left. “That’s longer than I thought. I’m proud of you.”

You glance around the parking lot yourself before turning to glare at him. “What, you’re telling me you didn’t trust me to follow orders?”

“I’m telling you I predicted your reaction based on what I know of you and you proved me wrong. You waited longer than I thought you would, which means you have more faith in me than I thought you do.” He smiles at you and you feel like he won, somehow. It pisses you off. “Thank you, Private Church.”

You do not dignify him with an answer. You _do_ dignify him with your middle finger, and you hate how he just laughs some more.

The Walmart, you will admit, is big. Really big. You forgot how big these mega-super-ultra Walmarts were. Who in their right fucking minds designs a Walmart this big, honestly. What is even the point. If the world is ever rebuilt (it won’t be, you know that) you hope they outlaw Walmarts like this because they take up so much fucking space and there is no fucking point.

You think of saying this to Flowers, as you slowly and carefully comb the aisles, watching each others backs. Think of saying it because the silence is beginning to eat at you again. Think of saying it. Think of saying anything. Want to. Don’t, until you’ve deemed the place clear.

“Jesus fuck,” a loud burst of sound, “That took forever.”

Flowers sheathes his knives and holsters his magnum. “Better safe than sorry,” he says again, and you don’t even hate him for it because at least now you’re talking. The silence is drowned out.

Now that you’ve cleared the place, you’re free to actually pay attention to your loot, which is about when you discover the real reason all this seemed too good to be true. You tear apart every aisle and come up with stupid electronics you can’t use, clothes that will never fit you, and maybe a handful of candy bars. The food is cleaned out; the weapons section, because this Walmart has a fucking weapon section, has been looted too.

When you and Flowers rendezvous by check out, where you are viciously kicking one of the cash registers, the Captain just shrugs.

“I told you this might happen,” he says gently, and you say “Fuck you,” because he _did_ tell you, and you forgot. Flowers asks, “Did you find anything useful?”

“Do five candy bars and an electric shaver I can’t fucking use count as useful?” You continue kicking the register. “No, they fucking don’t. Stupid. Fucking. Walmart!”

Flowers, the eternal ray of goddamn sunshine, just laughs. “Oh, Church, your antics never fail to lift my spirits. I could just pinch your cheeks, you’re so cute.”

You point the ka-bar at him very seriously and do not stop kicking the cash register. “Touch me and I will gut you, Flowers.”

“Whatever you say, Private.” You have the intensely infuriating feeling that you are being patronized, and have to resist the urge to cut off the hand that ruffles your hair because Flowers could seriously disembowel you. “Come with me, I think I may have found something to cheer you up.”

You grumble and swear, and then you follow him anyway, because what the hell else have you got to lose?

In the back of the store several shelves have been knocked down. You saw them before and didn’t pay any attention – it looks like lots of shit has been knocked over in the panic, it’s nothing new. Flowers’ leads you to a specific one, and together the two of you heave it up – beneath, you find a small treasure trove. You’re half convinced this is a starvation induced fever dream: there’s a case of beer, and another of water, and a bedroll. There’s no food, which your stomach weeps for, but that’s made up for by a couple knives and a handgun and – holy shit that is a belt of grenades. “Oh my god, Flowers, how the hell did you find this?”

“It looked like someone’s been staying here,” he says. It really didn’t look that way to you, but you suppose he must know this kind of shit better. “Recently, too. I saw these and figured they might not have left yet.”

“Do you think they’re coming back?”

Flowers looks around the store. His smile is intact, as always, but it doesn’t reach his eyes and that chills you, Private Church. Your joy is turning sour in your mouth, in your stomach.

“No,” he says, after a long moment. “No, I don’t think they will.”

You pack up the goods in silence. Flowers’ guard is up – he’s back in shadow-mode, every sense pricked, every movement silent. You can practically taste your heartbeat. You want to get the hell out of here, as fast as you can, but once you’re ready to go Flowers lead you further inside.

“I thought we could take the back door,” he says, quiet and without looking at you. His gaze is still intense, and for once you don’t question it.

When you get outside, you wish you had.

There’s a reason the place was so silent and dead. Of course there’s a reason. You knew it was too weird that there were no zombies, and now you see why: they’re all clumped around a building just behind the Walmart, smaller and hidden from view of the freeway. The horde is the biggest you’ve ever seen, a hundred bodies swaying, a hundred bodies rotting, a hundred bodies frothing and groping at the sky—

No, not the sky. The roof. The roof, where a young man stands, staring down.

The guy has a dark head of hair, and a pack on his shoulders; he seems to be shouting at the zombies, but you can’t hear what he’s saying over the relentless, deafening moans of the undead. Your stomach feels like a dying fish - it flops once, twice, weakly as you stare at him. God, you’d hate to be that guy. You hitch the strap of your rifle higher on your shoulder and flex your fingers around the ka-bar, drawing comfort from its solid weight. You glance at Flowers – he’s watching the man with a look in his eyes that makes the dying fish sputter and flail sickly.

“Flowers. _Flowers._ Come on, man, before those things notice us,” you nudge him and start to inch away, fingers getting itchy around the stock of your rifle, but Flowers doesn’t move.

“They’ve got that young man surrounded.” He doesn’t take his eyes from the guy on the roof.

“Yeah, and I appreciate him offering such a great distraction while we get the hell out of here, we’ll send him a fruit basket later, come on,”

You backpedal another few steps, and that’s when Flowers looks at you - your stomach drops to your shoes.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Flowers’s expression says very clearly that no, he is not kidding you. “You don’t have to help me, Private Church. I would never force you to do something you didn’t want to. But bear in mind that it would be the right thing to do - not to mention that some people believe in karma. Who knows? Maybe it’ll turn out that he’s got some food in that pack he’s willing to share.”

He turns and begins to creep for a better position, and you, Church, think one thing very clearly: fuck your life.

“Fuck my life.”

You creep behind him, still infinitely louder, and hiss as he crouches behind the nearest shop. “So what’s the plan, you psychotic bastard?”

He holds a finger to his lips, and shows you the plan: it is deceptively, suicidally simple. One: pull the pin on a grenade, toss it as far as you can into the zombie horde. Take out a handful that way, and distract the rest with the explosion. Two: as soon as they clear a large enough path, get the guy to jump down. Three: run like hell, because there is sure as fuck going to be a stampede of undead cannibals hot on your heels.

You and Flowers split up, briefly – Flowers to throw the grenade, you to get the guy’s attention. From this close you can hear what he’s saying: pretty much a bunch of really creative swears. There’s an aching kind of desperation in his voice, a raw and burning anger that you recognize: he thinks he’s going to die, and he’s going to die fighting, raging, blazing. You stare at him, a beacon of fury and life, and can’t help but admire him a little.

When Flowers is in position, you stand up, your gut churning, and begin to wave your arms like a fucking idiot. If any of those zombies take their eyes off the prize on the roof they’re going to see you, and you’re going to be fucked. But you can’t think of another way to get this guy’s attention, and thank god, he notices you first. He’s in the middle of a string of curses when he catches sight of you and freezes, and you hold up a hand to tell him to wait, and then crouch down again. Glance at Flowers, across the lot, and give him a thumbs up.

Flowers nods. Pulls the pin. Lobs the grenade.

You count the seconds.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five—

The explosion is not as loud as you thought it would be. You’ve been around grenades before, thrown them, barely escaped them, but somehow you hyped yourself up so much for this one that it’s kind of anticlimactic. The zombies don’t think so. The explosion takes out a good chunk of them, and the rest of them are shambling over to see what’s going on. Flowers is already creeping back toward you. You’ll only have a second, the opening will close up again almost immediately.

There. You shoot back up and wave frantically, making unmistakable _come on you fucking asshole jump if you want to live_ motions with your arms. The guy gets the message, good, but ohfuck the zombies have noticed you this time, bad. The guy takes a running leap from the roof and you chuck another grenade into the horde and you barely have the time to hope that this fucker doesn’t break his legs before the second explosion happens, and then the third, and then you and Flowers are helping the guy up and the zombies are howling and they’re burning and you—

You run.

—

The guy’s name is Tucker. You resent him because he nearly got you killed, but you can’t resent him too much because it turns out he does have food in that pack of his, along with a couple more guns and a long, wicked blade, and he is willing to share. Karma, who would’ve thought.

“I was hiding out in the Walmart,” says Tucker. “I’m pretty good at keeping under the zeeks’ radar. Thought I could skate by and check out what was in that building without them noticing.” A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Obviously that didn’t work out.”

You wonder how long he stood on that roof, screaming at the undead at the top of his lungs. You wonder if one of those guns, or maybe that blade, ever started to look inviting.

“Well, I’m just glad we found you,” says Flowers, warm and nurturing as ever. “Thank you for sharing your supplies. This is Private Leonard Church, I’m Captain Butch Flowers. You can travel with us, if you like.”

Tucker stares at him in shock. So do you.

“Holy shit, really?” says Tucker.

“Holy shit, no!” says you, because holy shit no. “Look, we saved your life, you’re welcome, we’ll take our hero’s fee in half of your supplies, no need to thank us, that’s it, goodbye.”

“What’s your problem, man?” Tucker is glaring at you – his eyes are startlingly bright in the smooth brown of his face, piercing blue, or green, or some mix of the two. You glare back.

“My problem is that we have no idea who the fuck you are—”

“I’m a human, isn’t that enough—”

“—and if what we just saw is any indication you’re probably just going to weigh us down—”

“—wow, fuck you—"

“Boys, boys.” Flowers steps between you two before fists can be thrown, his hands held up, palms out. You have no idea when you got to your feet, but it looks like Tucker’s just as surprised as you are. “In-fighting will get us nowhere. Private Tucker is right, we’re all human, that should be enough reason to stick together.”

You do a double take. “Private? You’re telling me he’s military too? But-” You gesture uselessly to his dreads. “Non reg!”

“It’s been years since the military fell apart, genius,” Tucker snaps. “No shit my hair is non reg by now.”

“Years?” You do another double take – you’re going to get whip lash – but you can’t think about your fucked up memory right now. It’ll eat you up if you do, you’re not ready for that. “Ugh, whatever. Flowers, we have no idea who this guy is-”

“I had no idea who you were when I picked you up, Private Church,” Flowers reminds you helpfully, “And look how well that turned out. Besides, all of us are army men. Birds of a feather, as they say,”

“Owned,” mutters Tucker, smirking at you. Flowers turns to him before you can answer, effectively ending the conversation. Fuck.

“Welcome to the squad, Private Tucker.” He snaps a salute, and Tucker snaps a lazy one back. “I’m not wrong to think you won’t be a danger to us, am I?”

You can’t see Flowers’s face but you can see Tucker’s – whatever he sees cows him and straightens his spine.

“No sir,” he says, and if nothing else you have the satisfaction of smirking over Flowers’s shoulder and muttering, _“Owned.”_

—

Tucker’s a bastard, you learn that right off. If you had any illusions about a chain of command, they are brutally dashed; despite how long you and Flowers’ have been traveling together now, you and Tucker are both Privates and that’s that. You have no seniority over him and it is endlessly frustrating that he won’t do what you tell him to. Not to mention he’s lazy as a dead dog in summer (so are you, but that’s beside the point). But he knows his way around that long fancy blade of his, and he wasn’t lying about being good at creeping beneath the zombies’ radar. It becomes painfully clear painfully quickly that when it comes to stealth missions you are by far the loudest of the three of you, but at least you’re better at tactical planning than he is. This may be because he is too lazy to care, but you’ll take what you can get.

When you try to ransack a market a few weeks after you pick him up, there’s a small herd of zombies waiting for you. You trip up as you’re running away – you can hear Flowers calling your name but he’s too far away to help you. The first zombie descends upon you and gobs of meat fall out of it’s mouth onto your cheek. You’re dead, you’re done, this is how it ends, the last thing you will ever smell is this rotting, rancid breath, oh god, and the last thing you will ever see is—

Tucker’s shoe?

It sails through the air and beams the zombie right in the face. He helps you up and you hobble away together. By the time you get to safety Flowers is so touched by your teamwork that he’s practically on the brink of tears, the nerd. He even goes so far as to “promote” Tucker, and when you scoff in disgust _Private First Class_ Tucker just grins at you, smug as an asshole that just got a shitty fake promotion.

“You’re just jealous that I got promoted and you didn’t.” says Tucker. Deny, Private Church, that you are jealous of Tucker and his shitty fake promotions. Deny it _fervently,_ because being jealous about something like that is stupid as fuck and you are a grown man.

Still, the asshole lost his shoe to a zombie for you. Now, whenever you see his one-shoed feet the two of you grin at each other. That’s when you have to admit he’s not so bad.

—

It’s been about eight months since you met Captain Flowers and three months since you picked up Tucker. You just got out of a scrape with the first other group of survivors you’ve seen since the world fell apart (that you can remember, anyway). You’re only alive now because of Flowers’ freaky ninja skills, though you’d never admit it. Turned out they were military too, except much more like the dicks you remember the military being comprised of. At first things started out sort of okay, and then everything fell to shit real fast, because clearly the world doesn’t want you thinking humanity might be anything less than terrible. Well, consider yourself reminded: humanity is bullshit and fuck the world too for proving it to you.

Now you’re holed up in a little one-room box shack for the night. The adrenaline is still a drug in your veins, and Tucker’s, and there’s no way either of you will be sleeping. Flowers could probably konk out if he wanted: guy can sleep anytime, anyplace he chooses, which is very military, and standing up with his eyes open for good measure, which is less military and more the fact that Flowers is a creepy fucker sometimes. Despite this, he’s decided to stay up with you, out of some stupid sense of solidarity. The three of you pass the hours waiting for sunrise by playing cards. By which you mean, you and Tucker have been losing to Flowers pathetically at cards. It stopped being fun eight hands ago.

“Come here, Private Church, Private Tucker,” Flowers has a pack of cards in one hand and a drink in the other. You glance at Tucker who glances back at you; both of you are busy nursing your own drinks, as well as the remains of your dignity from that last hand of poker. You don’t know why you keep trying, Flowers never fails to clean house.

“Another game, sir?” asks Tucker warily, and Flowers gives him that disapproving dad look that makes you want to punch him in the mouth at the same time as it makes you want to fix whatever you did wrong. It’s an annoying and confusing mix of emotion, and puts you in an even worse mood.

 _“Tucker,”_ says Flowers, all fatherly disappointment, and Tucker grimaces.

“Uh, sorry, I meant… Another game, Cap…py?”

Flowers brightens. “Something like that, Tucker,” he says. He waves you both over. “Come have a seat.”

After another moment of consideration Tucker shrugs and meanders over. Plops down, legs crossed. They both look at you, and you make a point of rolling your eyes so aggressively that you nearly gives yourself a migraine.

“I can see fine over here, thanks,” you snort, and are sorely disappointed when Flowers just nods understandingly.

“Whatever works for you, kiddo.” You twitch. “Do either of you know how to play solitaire?”

Immediately Tucker starts to waggle his eyebrows. “Nah, playing it solo isn’t really my thing. I always have a _partner,_ if you know what I’m saying. Bow chika bow wow,”

You decide taking a step closer is worth it to whack him upside the head. “Are you saying you’re an idiot? Because that’s the message I’m getting.”

“Whatever, dude. You’re just jealous that you have to play _solitaire_ all the time - ow! Okay okay, lay off!”

“For your information, asshole, I don’t even know how to play solitaire, so…” you trail off. “So… there, I guess. …That didn’t work out as well as I hoped.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Flowers, who had been watching the exchange with a fond smile, chuckles and pats Tucker’s shoulder. “Oh, boys. Your charming shenanigans will be the death of me.”

He starts to lay out the cards - the blue ones, with blood stains at the top right corner. At first Church is reminded of Spit, but there are six piles and Flowers is only dealing for one. “Pay attention, now,” he instructs, “This game is more important than ever in the world we live in.”

“What with everyone dropping like flies,” you translate. “Rotting, cannibalistic flies.”

“Gross.” Tucker scrunches up his nose, but Flowers remains unphased.

“Exactly, Church. You can imagine how valuable a one-man game like this becomes, if only for how frequently one is forced to play.”

“Wow. Poetic.”

Flowers teaches you, shows you a few hands himself and then has you each try it yourselves. He produces another deck of cards from fuck knows where, and it’s fun, at first, trying to beat Tucker at a game you’re both mediocre at. But Flowers is in rare form: though he keeps up the smile and the strangely upbeat tone, his optimistic outlook seems to have vanished, only to be replaced with a depressing mantra about loneliness and the monstrosity of man in a world such as yours. Betrayal, death, fear, hate, all of it boiling down to the same thing: the eventuality of being alone. _And,_ Flowers continues, being alone will hone your senses. It will make you a survivor, he says. You’ll learn that it’s best not to trust anyone, he says, that you can only rely on yourself. That being alone and having no one else to burden you is perhaps the best hand one can be dealt, in a world like yours. That the only real problem is passing the time.

 _Fucking depressing_ doesn’t even begin to cover it. You may have just been thinking the same thing, but to hear from Flowers, who is supposed to remain terminally optimistic, puts a whole new shitty spin on it. You and Tucker place your last respective cards - you’ve both been stumped, Tucker’s last card the four of diamonds and yours the Queen of spades - and Flowers nods with finality.

“And now you know how to pass your time should you ever find yourselves alone again.”

You glower at your cards. “Yeah. Sure. Thanks a bunch, Flowers. You know, beneath that gruff exterior you’re a real ball of sunshine.”

Tucker is frowning at the cards too. “Man, I know you said that being alone is like the best fuckin’ thing ever for survival, but lemme tell you, it totally sucks.”

Flowers doesn’t answer at first. He reaches over and rakes both decks back, shuffling them each into neat, separate piles. When he speaks his voice is calm and even. “Now I need you boys to promise me something.”

You - very understandably, you think, after that speech - are not in the mood. “Oh boy, is it going to be as fun as the talk we’re having now? Like, promise to kill each other if we get bit so we don’t have to watch each other turn into monsters or something?”

Tucker looks mortified. “Please say he’s wrong.”

Flowers tucks the decks away inside his jacket as though you hadn’t spoken. When he meets your eyes he meets them - you don’t remember his gaze holding that much weight. It makes you squirm, for some reason, and then you realize: for the first time in all of your memory, Flowers isn’t smiling.

He says, “I need you to promise me you’ll never play this game again.”

You short circuit. “What?”

“Tucker is right, Church. Being alone makes you a survivor, but it takes everything else. Without your fellow man to remind you of your humanity, to give you a reason to fight for, you may as well be another monster.” He begins to clean up the cards. Solemn is not a word you would ever use to describe Flowers, and it is bizarre and unsettling to use it now. “Solitude, isolation. That’s our real enemy, boys.”

“And zombies,” Tucker adds, and Flowers blinks, and then he smiles. The solemnity falls away, and he reaches over to ruffle Tucker’s hair affectionately. After a second, he reaches over and musses your hair too, which… is still weird as hell, but hey, at least you’re getting used to it. So. Silver linings, or something.

“And zombies.” Flowers agrees.

—

It’s the first good news you’ve had in a long time.

The high school, to you, looks like any other high school, by which you mean a desolate and depressing black hole of assholes and crushed dreams. The zombies don’t really change that. But the doors are locked, and most of the windows unbroken. Given the lack of undead activity coming from within the building, Flowers is pretty optimistic (big surprise). You’re a little more skeptical, but a rock through a window and only a few decapitations later and you’ve never been so happy to be proven wrong.

You’re on a hot streak. The kitchens are still stocked, as are the vending machines, and you’re in such good spirits that when Tucker starts a brief food fight with the candy bars you join in and laugh and laugh and laugh.

After you’re stuffed on chocolate, Doritos, and nonperishables, you take a look around. Beneath the bloody and morbid messages of GO BACK and REPENT in the hallways are murals depicting school spirit, and you remember your own high school experiences.

“Fuck high school, man,” says Tucker, accurately summing up your feelings. “High school kids were assholes.”

He swipes his sword across a banner bitterly, and you find that it’s a lot more satisfying than it probably should be to kick at the tatters once they flutter pathetically to the ground.

Flowers is looking at a case of trophies, smiling. That’s nothing new. “I don’t know. High school was just peachy keen for me. Go Gators,”

“If that’s not fucking typical…” you grumble, and Tucker snickers his agreement. Flowers just claps you companionably on the shoulder.

“Come on, boys. If I recall correctly, the infirmary usually has some pretty comfortable cots.”

“A real bed? Fucking _sweet!_ Come on, Church!”

Maybe your luck is finally turning around. Karma and all that. Who are you to argue against fate?

—

It’s your fault, in the end. When you look back on it later you aren’t even surprised - you were always a fuckup.

And it’s so fucking stupid. While you’re exploring the high school Flowers twists his ankle. There are no zombies. No traps, no life threatening situations. You’re walking up a flight of stairs and it happens, just like that, just easy and quick and simple. It’s not even a big deal - if you got attacked by zombies at that exact moment, the three of you would still be able to make a quick, slightly-hobbling escape. But you said you’d ransack the nurse’s office for painkillers. And you had been so busy scarfing a twinkie (you and Tucker had practically wept when you found the pile of them in the back of the vending machine) that you don’t hear what Florida says about the pills. You just nod over your shoulder and ransack the office like you said you would, and come back with two painkillers like you said you would, and give them to Flowers like you said you would.

He says, “You checked what was in them right?” and you didn’t, because you hadn’t been paying attention to the instructions, but you nod anyway and say “Of course I did,” because you’re too fucking cowardly to fess up. Flowers smiles and pops them into his mouth.

And that’s it. That’s all it takes.

Two hours later and the zombies break in. None of you know how. Between you and Tucker you checked all the locks, made sure all the doors and windows were secure, but it doesn’t matter how they got in because they’re coming. They’re coming and you have to go, gogogo, and it shouldn’t be a problem because you’re on the third floor and there’s more than enough time to slide down the fire escape and make a break for the treeline before the dead-heads notice you, outrunning them should be easy, it should be so easy-

But Flowers is having trouble breathing.

His breath is a rasping rattle in his chest; he clutches at his ribs and doubles over whenever he tries to walk. He looks old, suddenly, and you feel like the curtain has been swept back from Oz. You hate it, and wish you could put it back. Keep Oz the great and powerful, you preferred things that way, you felt safer.

Flowers is no wizard. He’s just a man - just a soldier, having an allergic reaction to pills you didn’t bother to check the ingredients of.

“A little thing like this won’t kill me,” he assures you both, his voice swollen and awful but still soothing, somehow, and you and Tucker manage to believe him. You haul him over your shoulders and you run, and the undead are catching up, they’re always catching up, you thought you had enough time but you have barely any at all. You can’t make it to the room you want and have to settle for another - it doesn’t have the fire escape, but at least it has two doors, and the zombies haven’t made it to the other one yet. Flowers falls through the doorway and you close the door behind you on rotting fingers, Tucker shouting in terror as he shoves a chair beneath the handle and you both use the precious few seconds it buys to drag something heavier in front, a thick cabinet that takes every ounce of your combined strength to move. You get it there just as the chair gives way, and the swarm is held off for a few minutes longer. Only a few.

When you’ve caught your breath and convinced the loud terror ratcheting in your gut to quiet, you turn to Flowers and expect to see him on his feet. You expect his hands on his hips, a proud smile set in his mouth, a hair-ruffle for the two of you as you make your quick and daring escape.

You do not get what you expect. Instead you get Flowers, worse than ever and gasping for breath, slumped and leaning against the wall.

“Shit, he’s in bad shape,” whispers Tucker, which is obvious, but it’s a good thing he says it because it wouldn’t have sunken in otherwise. Flowers is in bad shape. There’s no way he’ll be able to run like this, that much is certain. Even if you manage to get to the fire escape in time, you’ll never make it to the treeline from the school before the zeeks catch up with you. There’s got to be some way, Flowers would find it, there’s not much time, you need to try harder-

“I’ve just had a thought,” says Flowers. He’s got a hand on his chest and his eyes are closed, head tipped back against the wall. “This jacket would fit you better, wouldn’t you say, PFC Tucker?”

Your brain grinds to a halt. Dread settles thick and hot in the pit of your stomach, coating your insides like tar. “What the fuck are you doing, Flowers?”

But Flowers is already peeling the jacket off, breath growing more labored with every passing second. By the time he holds it out he’s wheezing. He watches Tucker expectantly and Tucker watches the jacket, eyes round. It’s only when Flowers’s arm starts to tremble that Tucker takes it, hesitantly, and as the jacket switches hands something inside it rustles and then falls out, spinning across the floor and tapping against Flowers’s boots.

Flowers picks up the two decks of cards with a soft “oh” of surprise, and then a low, throaty cough. There’s something there in his dark eyes, something quiet and resigned, and when he opens his mouth you beat him to it.

“We’re not leaving you here,” you say fiercely, and finally, finally seem to catch Flowers by surprise - it’s no where near as satisfying as you thought it would be. The expression melts away to one of warm affection.

“I appreciate your loyalty, Private Church,” he says, and he means it, like he always means it. You hate him for that. “but it’ll take at least an hour for this reaction to die down, and they’ll catch you if you have to drag me around. If you go now, you’ll make it out and I’ll-”

“Dude, stop, we’re getting you out of here-” says Tucker, at the same time you say, _“Fuck_ you-”

You’re both startled into silence when moaning begins to reverberate from outside the door. For a second there’s silence in the room and all you can hear is your heartbeat, feel it thumping away in your chest, trying to shatter your ribcage.

“Here.” Flowers breaks the silence. When you look back at him he’s holding out the decks, one in each hand. “One for each of you. Remember your promise, now, don’t ever play alone,”

You snarl. “Flowers, if you think I’m actually going to leave you here to pull some bullshit martyr act-”

“Take good care of them for me. I’ll take them back when I meet you at the-”

“No, shut up, shut the fuck up, you’re coming with us, you’re-”

“Church.”

You stop talking. Flowers is smiling, and that’s nothing special because Flowers is always smiling, but this one is different, somehow. His voice is very gentle. “Take good care of them for me, please?”

You stare at the cards, small and bloodstained in the palms of Flowers’s hands, and can’t bring yourself to take them. You don’t have to - without a word Tucker scoops up both and slides them into the pockets of his new jacket. Flowers sags as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders; it feels like you’ve made a deal you can’t take back, and in that moment you hate Tucker more than you can possibly say.

“One of them belongs to a dear friend,” Flowers murmurs, and then he laughs, softly. “I can’t remember which deck, though.”

When you leave, Flowers is breathing heavily, propped up against the wall. He promises to see you later, and tells you not to get into too much trouble until then, you little rascals. The last thing you see of Captain Butch Flowers is his smile, as he waves you off with one hand and draws a blade with the other. Then the door closes, and you run.

—

You and Tucker wait at the rendezvous point for the agreed few hours, and then you wait a few more. By the time a full day has passed, you both agree that Flowers isn’t coming. He’s probably dead. You should move on before the zeeks make their way up here and get you.

—

You wait a second day.

—

He doesn’t come.

—

You stayed with Flowers because he kept you alive. That’s the only reason.

Keep telling yourself that, Church.

You stayed because he kept you alive. That’s the only reason. You stayed because he kept you alive. That’s the only reason. That’s the only-

—

For four days, you and Tucker travel.

The first day you walk. You don’t know where. You don’t think Tucker does, either, and it doesn’t matter. You just… go, for twenty four hours, sun up to sun down to sun up again. You just go. Go. Kill six zombies total, that first day, between you. Go. Don’t sleep. Go. Don’t say a word to each other. Go.

The second day you rest. You scout houses in the nearest residential area until you find an empty one, one story, small, shattered windows but no zombies inside. You eat the rations in your packs; it’ll last you another week or so until you scavenge some more. You take first watch that night and there’s a dead man scratching at the door by the end of it; instead of ignoring it, as you should, you open the door and you put the ka bar that Flowers gave you through it’s eye. You do that ten more times. If Tucker is perturbed by the corpse on the doorstep the next morning, he doesn’t say anything. Neither of you say a word to each other.

The third day you’re on the move again. You don’t know where; it doesn’t matter. Tucker takes out his deck of cards - the blue ones, with the bloodstain on the top right corner - and shuffles them. He kills five zombies, you kill four; that night you get restless and go outside, kill three more. Tucker comes with you, and kills a few of his own. Something unspoken goes between you and neither of you sleep that night. You hunt zombies and you nearly die once, twice, three times - you stop counting. You hunt and you kill and you put that ka-bar through as many skulls as you can. The only difference between you and Tucker is that his aqua jacket remains clean; he left it in the house before you left.

That bleeds the two of you into the fourth day, and by then you have killed twenty four zombies, and the last one you kept smashing and smashing and smashing until it’s skull was pulp and paste beneath your boot and on your skin and Tucker had to drag you away and neither of you said one fucking word, not for four whole days.

On the fifth day, you find Caboose.

You’re on the move again, leaving the residential area when you hear a voice. You stray towards it and Tucker, wordlessly, follows.

There’s a small horde surrounding a house, and on the roof of the house is a man. He’s talking at them - not yelling, talking. Scolding them like they’re fucking dogs, wagging a finger, brows lowered, voice stern. “No. Bad bitey things. Bad. Go away.”

You stare at him. The zombies don’t notice you over their current prey, so you keep staring. And you keep staring, and when it doesn’t look like you’re going to do anything but keep staring-

“Church.”

It’s the first thing Tucker has said in five days. Revel in that, Church. That one word after one hundred and twenty hours. Wonder, in the span of two seconds, whether or not to be mad at him for not speaking to you for five days - decide instead to be grateful that he broke the silence at all. Because you never would have, not even if it gnawed you away to blood and bone.

“C’mon, man, let’s go.”

He starts to go back the way you came but you don’t move. You’re staring at the guy on the roof, and you’re hearing him speak: “Bad zombies. No. Bad. Down. Sit.”

You think of the last few grenades you have between you and Tucker. You think of the deck of cards sewn into the lining of your jacket. You look at Tucker.

“God damn it,” Tucker hisses at the look in your eyes, “you can’t be serious, Church-”

You turn away and creep closer to the horde and the young guy on the roof. “You don’t have to come with me,” you say. Your throat is dry with disuse, but the flat sarcasm is still intact. Good. “It’s only what Flowers would have done, not like you’d be disrespecting his memory or anything.”

But Tucker is following behind you before you even get to Flowers’ name. “Fuck my life,” he says, and you almost smile.

—

This is who is dead: Captain Butch Flowers, and a fuckton of zombies.

This is who is not: Church. Tucker. Caboose.

And you will make damn sure it stays that way.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter to my multi fic zombie au. I'll add tags for characters as they appear, but you can expect pretty much the entire cast to feature. Thank you for reading!
> 
> Coming soon: PART II: RED


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